Finding characters for the game, quite a tricky task

Hei hei,

As I said in my last post, I’ve spent many hours finding some characters for the future mobile game, whose final version will be available on the Lights on! sites in 2018 🙂 .

The first task Anttoni (from the game lab) gave me was to find, for each site, the peak period and 2 important rulers who lived at that time. Easier said than done, as historical facts are often missing, mostly for the Estonian sites… I also had to find 24 task-givers characters, which could be imaginary or actual, so I had more freedom for those. Fortunately, an archaeologist had written a good summary of the 8 sites ’stories, but some information was still missing. So I had to begin some researches in Estonian in order to find something. Not the easiest task… 😀 I also asked some help from Lagle, who works in RMK (same as Metsähallitus (State Forest Entreprise), but in Estonia). She did some researches which helped me a lot, it was really nice of her 🙂 .

After finding those 40 characters and the peak periods, I sent all my work to the archaeologist so that he could check if everything was coherent. It was important as later on, it will be hard to change all this information when everything is put in the game. Fortunately, he said it was really well done 🙂 .

The next step was finding some pictures for all those characters (to have references and models)! For some of them, as the kings in Raasepori, it was easy, but when it came to almost unknown old characters, such as Mathias de Rapalum (in Rapola), it became more complicated. But thanks to my researches and the help I got from different people (thanks Jaana 🙂 ), I managed to find them all. Nina just told me that they will all be virtually created with a program that looks really nice. I’m sad my internship ends in a few days, because I would have been the one using this program if I could have stayed longer 🙁 .

Yes, I wanted to make my internship longer, until June or August, as everything’s going well, but my university didn’t accept, they said it will be a too long internship for the 10 ECTS I got for it. That’s pity 🙁 . But it’s ok, I’ll find a way to come back to Finland. But it would have been sooo nice to stay longer here at Humak, as now I know almost everybody involved in the Lights on! Project, and I know almost everything about all the sites (mostly after reading again and again their history to find the characters 😀 ). I love my life here, and I really don’t feel like going back to Belgium (well, I want to see my family and my friends, obviously, but if I could bring them here I would 😀 ).

In my next blog post, I will talk about the augmented reality application I’ve tried in Tampere and I’ll say a few words about my trip to Joensuu, which was amazing 🙂 .